Page 163 - Information and American Democracy Technology in the Evolution of Political Power

P1: GYG/IJD/IBA/IJD
18:0
August 14, 2002
CY101-Bimber
CY101-04
0 521 80067 6
Political Organizations
This kind of local focus also couples with the capacity to easily target
citizen action at specific decision makers. Officials of the World Wildlife
Fund believe that the selective mobilization of affiliates is most likely to
succeed when there are few decision makers involved. The fund prefers to
direct the energies of its affiliates toward individuals in the Forest Service,
EPA, or international policy-making bodies. This means that fighting
large-scale policy battles in Congress is a much less promising strategy
for it than targeting specific agency actions or persuading regional or
local policy bodies to act. One of ED’s most successful efforts involved a
response in early 2001 to an announcement by EPA Director Christine
Todd Whitman that her agency was considering relaxing standards for
diesel emissions. ED officials distributed a call for action the same day,
and claim to have generated 12,000 faxes and electronic mail messages
to Whitman in two days. 88 Along with the responses of many other
organizations, this effort appears to have contributed to EPA’s backing
away from the proposal. Neither ED nor the other groups examined
in this study have experienced a comparable level of effectiveness with
Congress, lending support to WWF’s assumption. 89
One of the most interesting changes precipitated by these new ap-
proaches to communication and managing information about citizen
interests is ongoing coordination efforts between ED and other environ-
mental groups. Coalition formation among interest groups is generally a
highly information-centric practice. Research by Kevin Hula has shown
thatreceivinginformationfromcoalitionpartnersisanimportantincen-
tive for interest groups who are considering working with others. At the
same time, groups in coalitions require an intensive flow of information
90
in order to act in concert with one another. Across interest groups of all
kinds, therefore, lowered costs of information and communication make
coalition-brokering tasks easier and less costly and provide potentially
enhanced benefits from group participation in coalitions.
The new information and communication systems being employed
by the environmental groups are having effects consistent with this

88
Ben Smith, Environmental Defense, telephone interview with Joe Gardner for the
author, May 9, 2001.
89
Interviews with congressional staff confirm this fact. For example, one staffer of the
Senate Environment and Public Works Committee reports that electronic mail advo-
cacy directed at the committee is minimal, and that when electronic mail campaigns
do hit Congress, they are almost always directed at individual members rather than
the committees working on the bills. Duane Nystrom, Senate Environment and Public
Works Committee, telephone interview by Joe Gardner for the author, April 27, 2000.
90
Hula, Lobbying Together.
146